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Towards the end of the film, the ongoing situation of workers at Honeywell/Metropolis is introduced. One workers union, the USW (United Steels Workers), is protesting working conditions and exposure to toxic materials at the plant. They report that workers were locked out after protesting working conditions. They organize protests on the streets in proximity to the plant and march together at the parade on labor day. USW representatives report difficulties of processing complaints of residual contamination because documents were missing, of the processed claims mentioned in the film only 124 were approved while 205 were denied. One health physisist reports about the entrenched bureaucratic culture and that doctors were trained to testify against workers who made health claims, he seems to be very concerned about this as it exposes workers to dangerous working conditions. I think that unionizing as collborative action is a very powerful and effective approach, and think it would be important for health physicists and plant workers to organize together rather than fighting on their own (as it seems to be the case currently).

Denise DeGarmo, associate professor of political science at University of Illenois, took camera team on tour through Weldon Springs. She explained that instead of undergoing remediation, the site at Weldon was turned into a natural reserve after the initial cleanup (at which workers received scarce information about dangers of the materials they were working with). Deniese reports that this way one did not have to do another cleanup, but she further reports that material has migrated into ground water of surrounding areas. Another stakeholder reports that people go there for recreational purposes and children are playing in the area. I find it difficult to distinguish emergency responders in this situation (except for the initial cleanup laborers), as toxic waste sweeps out slowly, and thus body burden only shows up over time. I was very surprised about the possibility to circumvent action and removal of toxic wastes by turning a site into a natural reserve and would have liked more information about this policy in the documentary.

Multiple stakeholders are introduced in this film, such that either directly worked at the plant or had family who worked there, such that were academically interested in the matter, or such that were concerned about their community.

Paul Mitchell was a former electrician at Mallinckrodt, he was not informed about potential dangers and states that "no one there knew what uranium was". Further, he talks about noticing how colleagues got cancer, at beginning he did not find this unusual but then became weary after one colleague who had been very young and fit also was diagnosed with cancer.

Further, Brooks Davis tells her family story, she is the daughter of former plant workers (I think the father worked there for about 15 years, while the mother worked there for 1 year). Her father had been working in "hot areas" and was shifted to other areas in the plant whenever his exposure to radioactivity had been exceeding permitted levels for some time, and then was moved back after a short period of "cooling down". He got lung cancer at age 40, and was struggling with the disease for years, which caused him much bodily and emotional pain, finally he died in 1978. Her mother, who lived in poverty as a result of losing her husband so early and having to provide for her children, tried to claim to be entitled for compensation but was denied this repeatedly for bureucratic reasons until she wrote a letter explaining her situation.

Clearance Schneider was a health and safety inspector at Weldon Spring, he explains that one had to wear a badge and a white uniform when working at the plant, and if something was not right with the badge (that recorded nuclear exposure), it was taken off. He reports an incidence with a hydrochloric acid cloud that was released into the air and hovered over the neighborhood. He had skin cancer, but you could not confide this to anyone as he was afraid to lose his job, and when the company closed he reports that one was not allowed to leave the country for 3 years.

Obie Young was a chemical operator and reports that when his job was eliminated, he got several months of pay such that he would not need another job for a while, because if he had started a new job they would ask for tissue samples and find out that radioactivity was much too high in his body.

Another stakeholder is the organization "St. Charles County against hazardous waste" with his president Dr. Michael Garvey. They were concerned about contamination at Weldon Spring site, and demanded that the voice of concerns were heard at citizen meeting.

Gary Ferguson, a laborer who was involved in the cleanup of the site, reports that Geiger counters went through the roof but "they told us it was not dangerous". Further, he reports that containers with stored chemicals were disintegrating. Every day he worked at the cleanup, he had a bloody nose, but when he told his supervisor this person respondet that he should not talk to anybody about it, because otherwise he would get fired. He therefore decided not to confide in anybody, because he "had to pay his bills".

Gerald Kleba, a priest in the community, who noticed that many children in his precinct were sick and died, went on a Weldon Spring "tour". He was surprised that people on the other side of the fence concerned with the cleanup had moon clothes on, but people on the tour on the other side of the meshed fence were wearing everyday clothes and not informed about potential dangers. This shocked him, and encouraged him to engage in communal activities to raise attention to the danger of chemical and nuclear waste in the neighborhood.

Three quotes that support this are

“Numerous case studies have document that meaningfully engaging lay communities in decisions traditionally made by scientific and technical elites can enable greater vigilance and raise confidence about individual emergency prepardeness.” (Schmid 196)

“So far, the nuclear industry has almost exclusively focused on accident prevention.” … “nuclear emergency preparedness and response has hardly gained traction.” (Schmid 200)

“They created an organization, Spetsatom” … “and with defining generalizable strategies about how to respond to a possible future nuclear emergency” (Schmid 200)

One of the main arguments in this publication is that the spread of illness is often determined by social forces. For example, impoverished individuals may be more susceptible to illness because they cannot afford the proper treatment, not because they are more likely to contract the illness. This is described as structural violence: socio-structural factors that prevent people from achieving their full potential, e.g. receiving medical care.

The report has been cited by many other articles and reports including ones published by the NIH

The main point of this article is to argue how the EPA falsely stated that the air quality around the site of the tower collapses in the day following 9/11 was safe. They argue this by stating that the building was constructed of 2,000 tons of asbestos and 424,000 tons of concrete which generated millions of tons of dust around the site of the collapse, per EPA estimates. They also argue that the EPA is at fault for making false statements of security and should be mandated to fund the cleanup process.

I further examined more details about the Fukushima disaster not mentioned in the article as I don't remember much from when this disaster occured. I also examined more about the first responders at Fukushima and the efforts that were made to attempt to minimize the effects of the disaster on an individual scale. I then looked into other similar disasters, like the Chernobyl disaster, that have occurred that I was not very familiar with and compared them to the Fukushima disaster.